When I was a child, growing in the Ngatamahine valley in the King Country, there would be gatherings of farming families. The dads would roll Park Drive tobacco and drink flagon beer, talking  wool prices and war. The mums would drink Pims, smoke Du Maurier and talk families. In order to make the most of the occasion the little children would go down for a sleep, their parents would later load them into cars when they all departed around midnight. On such an evening my father would say “Get your guitar Johnny, come and sing to the kids”. I would retrieve my soft string Suzuki from where it lay on my bed and go into the bedroom where a group of little ones were being settled. I would sing Peter Paul & Mary, Donovon Leitch, Joan Baez. The room would fall silent, the squirming children would lie still, clutching dolls, thumbs in their mouths they would soon grow sleepy. The light would be turned out and I would sing one final song and quietly exit. The mothers would say “you can come and do that at our place any night of the week”. To sing for people is common yet rare; the gift that seeks no price, an offering free of charge.

I have gone on to build a life in theatre, songs and storytelling are my currency.

At one end of my profession I work with writers and composers, I direct large scale theatre works interacting with people of accomplishment and fame. At the other end I stand and sing in the streets to anyone who wishes to listen. My first ‘Busk’ was in Grand Central Station New York City in 1982. After two songs a cop approached telling me I was breaking the law and that I should “Maybe go to Central Park”.  As I was packing my guitar he turned back and asked me where I was from. Uh oh I thought, this is the moment my illegal presence is detected and I get deported. “New Zealand”. “I hear its beautiful down there”. “Yes it is” I replied (please don’t ask to see my visa!) “What you should do is put postcards of your travels, you know, pictures of New Zealand inside your guitar case, people will like that”. I stammered my thanks for his friendly suggestion; as he strolled away I scuttled in the opposite direction. Busking. Something always happens, a moment, an interaction. The opportunity for exchange is laid openly, the invitation for reciprocity.

In February of 2022 I had another covid caused cancellation of a theatre festival booking so I decided on a project that could exist outside the boundaries of pandemic restrictions. I formulated my plan to Creative New Zealand and received a grant to busk in the streets of 14 North Island towns. The experience will provide source material for a collection of poems and essays inspired by busking encounters and my reading of local histories and stories. This tour is called Prowl and Seek  and will take place May 2nd to May 20th. It is however more than a restriction avoiding exercise. I will go onto the streets of these towns to sing to whatever living person might like to listen, but I also sing to the dead. There are of course ghosts aplenty, some resting, some troubled. The legacy of Governor Greys 1863 invasion of Waikato created a legacy whose tail is full of pain. The cenotaphs that stand in each of these towns give testament to the men who died fighting in the devastating squabbles of 20th century European tribes. Their bodies in some ‘foreign field’, their families bereft. In 1940 much of the King Country was still being ‘opened up’ and the forests that had stood for thousands of years were being felled. This was mans work, often young unmarried men, so when the call came to go to war many went, and a district such as Aria, near Piopio, where I grew up, lost more men per head of population than any in the country. The legacy of that also stalks the generations since. And so I sing to them. When I first went to Kyoto to study Noh Theatre I felt a profound sense of arriving in a mindset I instinctively understood. In the Noh play Genshigumo, written by my sensei Mishishige Udaka, the shite character goes in search of her daughter who perished in the atomic blast. When she finds her, the spirit of the daughter tells her “Keep singing for us, it works”. Prowl and Seek singing to the ghosts.